Christmas Family TraditionsGratefulness & Family Memories

Christmas Family Traditions makes our Christmas day celebrations
valuable and meaningful to our whole family. The hustle, bustle and
commercialism of Christmas in the stores makes it tough for us to keep
our kids focused on the true meaning of Christmas. Every year we try to
come up with some new ideas to help our children remember gratefulness
for what we do have and to know why we celebrate the Christmas season.

We love
super stuffing every family member's stockings for Christmas morning,
having great food and spending time together, singing on the couch in
front of the Christmas tree decorations in our 'Christmas room'.

The
Christmas that really impacted our children the most was after they
received their stuffed stockings in the morning and they entered our
'Christmas room'. They saw that there was only 1 present under our tree
and our tree displayed 4x6 pictures of children less fortunate than
them: sick, poor, undernourished, living in garbage and the piles of
gifts usually under it were not there. This year we wanted to teach our
kids gratefulness for all that God has blessed us with. We were
curious how they would react. After their initial shock,
disappointment, even surprise, then acceptance that this year there
weren't any piles of presents the children started to look at all the
pictures hanging on our tree. We then had them each take down a picture
to talk about what they saw in 'their' picture. After discussing the
pictures, we opened up the single
present. The present had a love letter from Jesus to them and 2 books
'The Candymaker' with candycanes for each and 'The Three Trees'.

It
was wonderful to see that our kids were satisfied, grateful and content
with their Christmas stocking and their 1 shared present. We then
unlocked our dinning room for breakfast and they were completely
surprised to see the dining table covered with presents for them.

Christmas
family traditions of value can get tricky but this worked for us this
year in replacing the 'gimme more stuff' attitude that had been building
up in our home. We want to aim each year at getting to the heart,
thinking beyond ourselves and teaching core values during our Christmas
celebration time that will reach past the commercialization we face and
pull our kids and our family back to the real reasons that we, as
believers in the resurrected Christ, celebrate the Christmas season.

Here's our Christmas family traditions idea for 'What to do on Christmas
Day' that made a difference and made it real for our kids.

Our kids saw they had lots to be happy, grateful & thankful for--we even saw tears of joy. A great start to building new Christmas family traditions.

Present Opening

Take the presents to the Christmas 'room' for opening

Make it special, get cozy and be excited with each gift they open

Open 1 present at a time 1 person at a time: make it valuable

Carry over to the next day--it doesn't have to be a one day deal

Games Time

Color, build & play games together

Board games, trivia, cards & party games--Have Fun Together

Turn It All In

Get to bed at a decent time, well rested for tomorrow

This was a great start for us in making Christmas family traditions that
have a real impact on the hearts of our children and their attitudes.

We
live in such excess that it was refreshing to see our kids enjoy each
other and the true meaning of Christmas. We have already begun plans
for next year's celebration to make an impact for our family.

Christmas Day, a great place to use Christmas ideas to build Christmas
family traditions that last and teach core values. Our christian
Christmas is about keeping Christ in Christmas.